


Give and Take

by bexacaust



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, mentions of experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 06:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7210913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bexacaust/pseuds/bexacaust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carry on my Wayward Son-<br/>There’ll be Peace when you are done…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give and Take

“Then tell me what I AM!" 

 Mercy looked at him, confusion flickering in her eyes, "You’re Reaper, a pers-" 

” **PEOPLE** DON’T DO THIS!“, he snarled, gesturing at the shadowy wisps that floated away from him, ” **PEOPLE** DON’T FADE AND RETURN! THIS IS A **DEVIL’S** TRAIT!“ 

 "You aren’t-" 

 "THEN TELL ME WHAT I AM! COME ALONG ANGEL, GIVE ME THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE CHRIST, **_TELL ME!"_**

 His voice cracked and shattered, no longer a warrior or a soldier or a battle-scarred beast- His accent wrapped around his words like a blanket; like the apron he hid behind when he was young and the sun was hot and the children at school laughed at his broken English, "TELL ME WHAT I AM!" 

 "Reyes.”, she said sternly, before shrinking back as he aimed his weapons.

 A click; the readiness to fire, wildness behind a cold mask. “I am not REYES anymore! THAT WAS TAKEN FROM ME!” 

“That cannot be taken from you unless you give it.”, she scolded.

“Yes, it CAN.”, he snarled, curling clawcapped fingers under his mask and peeling it away.

Mercy gasped, covering her mouth with both hands. His face… not even his face. Emptiness, black ooze like nighmares and sin and it dripped onto his clothing. A maw, no longer a mouth, teeth like stalagmites and stalactites; gnarled and carved like illegal ivory.

“They _took_ Reyes from me.”

“…Oh, Gabriel…”, she whispered, walking forward, “Oh Gabe, they’ve…”

He shied away, glaring at her with white hot pits like eyes.He saw the shrinkwrap of her eyes, a film of tears like pity made liquid and he bared his teeth.

“No, no Gabe let me try… let me try to heal you-”

“IT WON’T WORK. I’VE TRIED.”

“Please Gabe, let me try to fix this…”, she whispered, cupping his face in her hands even as it oozed over each digit, “Oh what have they done…”

“Let me GO.”, he snarled… yet made no play to move. He leaned into the touches, the strokes of thumbs over where cheekbones would have been.

“They took your eyes, your brown eyes…”, she whispered, pushing his hood back to show the source of leaking blackness weeping from warped and thickened bone, “Oh, little death, little fallen… they have hurt you so much, I didn’t… I didn’t understand.”

Those white fires snuffed out, he closed his eyes and hung his head, “…It… It burns, it _**burns**_ like hot pitch from d’Devil’s skin, Mercy.”

That accent, that tiny piece of him nurtured within his immortal shell peered out; a scared boy with rumpled dark hair and eyes the color of midnight deserts and coyote pelts at dusk.

“Oh Gabriel, I’m so sorry for what they have done, I am so sorry…”, she whispered, mechanical wings spreading as though to surround him.

“Mama would forsake me, should she see what I have become, if she ever knew…”, he breathed, the words bubbling forth as guns clattered to the ground from a nerveless grasp, “My… my family…”

“No, no they wouldn’t.”, she whispered, “Come here, no, they would love you all the same. You are still Reyes, still Gabriel, still a brown eyed boy with beautiful dreams.”

He choked as she pulled him close, her fingers caked in the nightmare fuel that dripped from him and her hand went to the back of his head. His knees went weak and they sank together into a curled Pieta of shattered ideals and old jealousies and he held tight to her.

Somewhere in him, something mourned.

He felt the washes of healing, heard the chimes and felt the hum in his body. He gripped tighter.

“Don’t waste your time, Mercy. It won’t work.”, he rasped, “I can’t be repaired-”

“You can, I don’t care if it takes the last breath from my lungs.”, she whispered, cradling him like Maria and her Child, “All are worth saving, even you. Especially you.”

He buried his dripping visage against her, drinking in the comfort of touch for the first time in so long as she whispered those last two words to him again.

_“Especially **you.** ”_


End file.
